According to Patrick Vogt who writes for the CMO Network on Forbes.com, .'..the cost to the Domino's national brand equity over the long term is still undetermined. Two recent surveys seemed to indicate that it will take time for the national brand to recover. An online research firm called YouGov confirmed that the perception of Dominos' brand quality went from positive to negative in approximately 48 hours. In addition, a national study conducted by HCD Research using its Media Curves Web site found that 65% of respondents who would previously visit or order Domino's Pizza were less likely to do so after viewing the offensive video."
By any conventional marketing metric, this would appear to be a corporate reputation crisis. From the Intangible Asset Finance Society's perspective, this appears to be a failure in the business processes that give rise to reputations based on quality - a universally important intangible asset. We ran a quantitative reputation analysis using the Steel City Re Intangible Asset Index.
The data show that this past week, Domino’s IA Index dropped from an 11 month high of the 52nd percentile to the 47th percentile among the 47 companies of the Restaurant sector. This past year, the company has had a progressively declining IA index, EWMA volatility at 4 logs or more, and an economic return that is 14% below the median of its peers.
Much has been written about the marketing challenges associated with the employee prank and the slow corporate response. We believe the real story, as suggested by the index data, is that Dominos is currently perceived to be no more than an average steward of its intangible assets. Its business process controls are weaker than the leading firms, and thus, its resilience in the face of this challenge will likely disappoint shareholders.
Dominos can resolve this problem with classic risk and reputation management – better business process controls on the human factors that underpin its reputation for product quality. Training, compliance and monitoring, and behavior enforcement tools need to complement its media-focused crisis management campaign. Because this is a franchise-sourced risk, there are unique insurance instruments that can increase the efficiency of compliance enforcement.
Marketing and crisis communications efforts are important but not sufficient. Customers need to know that in addition to management’s contrition, there are material changes in the company’s operations that place management in an improved state of control -- a level of command and control that will preclude this challenge to quality from happening elsewhere in the organization.
Dominos' mid-range reputation ranking contrasts with the top Restaurant sector IA index companies this week. In the top position, Panera Bread Co. (NASDAQ:PNRA), with an EWMA of three logs and an superior economic return that is 72.32% in excess of the median of its peers; McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE:MCD) in the 97th percentile slot, with extraordinary IA index stability comprising a near zero EWMA and an economic return that is 21.36% in excess of the median; and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (NYSE:CMG) in the 95th percentile position with a lively EWMA of 4 logs and a marginally superior return at 1.18% above the median.
Comments
Post has no comments.